Coaching practices for Awe and the Small Self as a Caregiver

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Awe and the Small Self as a Caregiver, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • In the moments something vast cracks me open, I feel this soft pull toward everyone and everything
  • When something makes me feel tiny against how huge the world is, my reflex is to flinch and grab back control, like feeling small is a threat to fend off
  • My own problems have swollen up to fill my entire world and I can’t see past them
  • For a little while right after something takes my breath away, the stuff I’d been stressing about genuinely feels smaller and farther off
  • I feel small and stuck inside my own head, looping on my own problems, and I want something vast enough

Practices that may help

  1. Awe and the Small Self
    Dacher Keltner’s research shows that awe — the response to something vast that exceeds our current frame — reliably produces the "small self": a felt diminishment of individual concerns that is experienced as expansive rather than deflating. This shift reduces self-focused rumination, increases prosocial behavior, and expands the sense of available time. The core effects are well replicated; the neural and downstream health claims are more preliminary.
  2. Use awe to reconnect with something larger than yourself
    When awe makes the self feel small, follow the natural impulse toward belonging — toward community, nature, or humanity at large.
    Awe and Well-Being, Made Practical
  3. Courting the small self
    Seek experiences that make you feel small in a good way — and notice the relief in it.
    Awe Walks, and the Science of Wonder
  4. Deliberately invoke the small-self shift
    Seek an encounter with something genuinely vast to let your personal concerns be re-proportioned.
    Awe and the Small Self
  5. Write from a small-self perspective after awe
    After an awe experience, write briefly from the perspective of someone whose personal concerns feel appropriately small.
    Awe and Well-Being, Made Practical
  6. Seek out awe as a broadening and self-transcending emotion
    Awe expands perceived time, reduces self-focused thought, and increases prosocial behavior — and it can be deliberately accessed.
    Broaden-and-Build, Made Practical
  7. Tend to yourself before tending to others
    Sustainable tend-and-befriend requires that the caregiver’s own basic needs are met — otherwise helping depletes rather than regulates.
    Tend-and-Befriend, Made Practical
  8. Shift from one-person to two-person psychology
    Stop managing your distress alone and start managing it together.
    Secure-Functioning Relationships
  9. Build the child’s inner wealth narrative over time
    Consistently reflect back who the child is becoming, not just what they’re doing.
    The Nurtured Heart Approach (Howard Glasser)
  10. Trust their capacity to find their own way
    Hold the belief that they can move through this — don’t treat them as fragile or as a problem to manage.
    Holding Space

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